Archives for May 2018

Immigrants are drawn to the United States because of its success as a nation: it offers economic opportunities, liberty and safety. Some people come here legally, while others cross the borders illegally—often lured by jobs offered by American employers who care not about the rule of law or border security. While portrayed as a land of immigrants, America has been brutally hostile to the new waves—who then get their turn at deriding and excluding the next waves.

For those who wish to keep illegal immigrants out of the United States, a major challenge is off setting the great appeal of America with something terrible enough to serve as a deterrent. Since there are people fleeing death squads or utter poverty, a rather strong deterrent is needed. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has found what he thinks is an effective deterrent, namely the threat that parents and children will be separated if they are caught being in the country unlawfully. As Sessions sees it, when parents take their children across the border, they are engaged in child smuggling and he intends to put the full weight of the law on the backs of those trying to enter or remain illegally. This approach does raise some serious moral concerns.

On the one hand, it can be justified on utilitarian grounds. Sessions’ goal is to enforce the existing immigration laws and he regards this as a worthy end. While separating children from their parents as a matter of policy seems wicked, cruel and heartless, such a serious threat could be enough to deter people from crossing. In effect, Sessions is saying: we will take your children away—a threat that would terrify any caring parent.

On the other hand, there seems to be a moral problem with threatening parents in this manner—especially with the recent revelations about what immigrant children could face. On utilitarian grounds, while this threat might have deterrent value, the harm to the parents and children could easily outweigh the positive value of deterrence. As such, it would be wrong to do this.

There is also the concern that such a threat is simply wrong—that is, the state should not threaten to separate families. This raises the question about what it is acceptable to do to try to secure the borders. On one extreme, it would clearly be wrong to simply kill the children of illegal immigrants who are caught. It would also be wrong to simply leave the borders uncontrolled. The question is how far one can, morally, go in defending the borders. Since the threat is aimed at families, this fact must also be considered in terms of the severity of threat allowed. It would be one thing to aggressively deter people who are intent on committing violent and serious crimes, quite another to use severe methods to deter people who are, at worst, likely to only work illegally for an American employer. Put another way, this threat works best against people who are far from the worst—families who care about their children. As such, this would seem to make the threat even more morally problematic.

It could be countered that some people might be trafficking children into the country to provide them to Americans who wish to exploit them, and these traffickers would be deterred by this threat. The easy and obvious response is that there are already laws against trafficking children that do not also catch families in a broad net. As such, this approach would do little or nothing to deter child trafficking; instead it would harm families.

Defenders of Sessions’ threat would note a point made by Sessions: if parents do not want to be separated from their children, then they should not come here. While this might seem like a reasonable point, some people who come here are fleeing terrible circumstances that are worse than what might happen to them here. As such, the deterrence value of the threat will be lacking. To use an analogy, it would be like having people on shore with whips threatening to whip the shark pursued survivors of a ship wreck if they step on the shore to get away from the sharks. The sharks are worse than the whip, but whipping the survivors is a terrible thing to do.

Also, saying “don’t do that if you don’t want me to do something bad to you” often has a bad moral odor and a strong flavor of justification by victim blaming. For example, a partner who says “if you don’t want to get hit, make sure you have my dinner on the table and keep your smart mouth shut” would clearly be in the wrong. Likewise, saying “if you don’t want us to do bad things to your kids, don’t come here illegally” seems to be the wrong thing to say. Defenders of Sessions would contend that this is not analogous at all; they would presumably see it more along the lines of “if you don’t want to get shot, then don’t break into my house”—a justified deterrence rather than a cruel threat.

As should be expected, my own view that this approach of threatening children is morally unacceptable—there are better ways to address border security that would be more effective and would not create the impression that we are thugs who threaten children.

Those who accept this argument will generally not be swayed by the facts: they will tend to be be suspicious of any source that denies what they feel is true, especially since these sources have been branded as biased liberals or fake news. They will also, naturally enough, feel the weight of their fear and anger—they outweigh any facts when it comes to feeling one’s way through political and ethical problems. That said, there is actually a very good argument that shows illegal immigration does increase crime in America.

It might be suspected that the easy and obvious argument is to point out that illegal immigrants are, by definition, breaking the law. As such, each illegal immigrant increases the amount of crime. The problem with this argument is that it conflates breaking a law with committing a crime. When a person is in the United States unlawfully, they are engaged in unlawful presence—which a civil infraction rather than a felony or misdemeanor. That is, it is more like a parking violation than burglary.

It could be countered that this criticism is splitting legal hairs. The obvious reply, other than the fact that law is all about hair splitting, is that this distinction does matter. The force of the argument about cracking down on illegal immigration because of the crimes they commit comes from the claim that they commit serious crimes (theft, rape, assault and murder) that harm society. The argument would have far less punch if the justification for the crackdown focused on the equivalent of parking violations.

To be fair, there are those who argue that all laws should be enforced if they are to remain on the books and to fail to do so erodes the rule of law. On this view, the crackdown on illegal immigrants would be justified even if the only law they broke was by being here unlawfully. Of course, adopting this view would require applying it consistently and demanding the strict enforcement of all laws, such as the laws against adultery in many of the states (including New York). For those who would prefer an alternative, there remains an eminently reasonable argument.

While illegal immigrants commit crime at a lower rate than native born Americans, they do commit crimes. So, if there were fewer (or no) illegal immigrants, then there would be less crime in the United States. As such, crime could be reduced by expending more resources and effort combating illegal immigrants. While it is true that reducing the number of illegal immigrants would probably reduced the amount of crime in the United States, there are some obvious concerns with this approach.

One somewhat silly reply is that this approach is analogous to proposing reducing crime by reducing the number of births. After all, if fewer people are born, then there will tend to be less crime. However, this seems to be a rather odd and ineffective way to reduce crime. Likewise for focusing on illegal immigrants—while they do commit crimes, if the goal is to reduce crime, then this goal would be better served by focusing resources directly on criminal activity. This is because the resources expended focusing on illegal immigrants would be focused on a group that commits crimes at a lower rate than native born Americans. It would be much more effective to focus on those who are committing crimes—be they Americans on illegal immigrants. As such, focusing on illegal immigration would be a poor way to reduce the criminal threat to Americans and thus that sort of argument has little merit.

Naturally, other arguments can be advanced for focusing on illegal immigration, such as the stock border control argument or economic arguments. These are, however, obviously distinct from the crime reduction argument—one that really has little or no weight.

One reason for the higher mortality rate is that women are giving birth at an older age than in the past, thus increasing the likelihood of complications and death. In general, women seem to be waiting on families because of economic concerns. This is yet another way in which economic injustice and instability literally kills people. As such, one way to address the mortality rate is crafting an economy that is more just and more stable—something the Republicans seem to vehemently oppose and Democrats seem incapable of doing.

While there is a significant political push against birth control, health care and reproductive clinics, another reason deaths have increased is that many pregnancies are unplanned, so women do not have the opportunity to address health issues before getting pregnant. One part of the solution is to improve family planning availability; although the push is for reducing such access. Another part of the solutions falls on individuals—they should take better care of themselves. Not just for cases of pregnancy, but in general. While people often want the state to legislate solutions, personal responsibility is a critical part of addressing this problem.

A fourth factor, which contributes to general poor health outcomes across the population, is that the United States health system is highly fragmented and compartmentalized. As such, new mothers can face health threatening challenges when they try to navigate this system. While there have been efforts to create a more unified health system, the trend does not look promising. Tied into this factor is the other general issue of affordable health care. As Trump and the Republicans promised, they are working hard to dismantle the existing system but seem to have little interest in addressing the problems that Obamacare tried to plaster over. Since the solution would be a well-designed health care system, it seems unlikely that this aspect of the problem will be solved in the foreseeable future. Unless the Republicans decide to take positive steps or the Democrats win enough seats to implement a viable plan.

In closing, it should be noted that while health care for the general population is a low priority for the current administration and most Republicans; the health care of women is an even lower priority. In fact, the main political focus has been on the issue of abortion and holding such clinics hostage with the threat of cutting federal funding.

Like this:

While there is no federal funding for abortion, the Trump administration has backed a rule that would forbid federal funding from going to clinics that provide or refer abortion services. In many cases, women rely on such clinics for medical services other than abortion, so if federal funding is cut, then these women might have to do without such things as pre-natal care and gynecological exams. As such, the rule presents a practical and moral quandary. To be specific, clinics that need federal funding will have to chose between reducing (or eliminating) services they cannot fund or eliminating abortion services and referrals.

On the one hand, opponents of abortion can make the argument that the defenders of abortion are in the wrong here: if the clinics would simply stop offering abortions and referrals, then they could receive the federal money they need to offer non-abortion services to women. As the anti-abortion folks see it, abortion is wrong and thus this option would be the morally best choice. If the abortion defenders refuse, the anti-abortion folks can say “look what you made us do” when the federal government refuses to provide funds to these clinics. On this view, the abortion defenders would bear the moral blame for the harm done to women by the denial of funding. This is because they are willing to allow this harm so that the clinics can still offer abortion services and referrals.

On the other hand, the defenders of abortion can make the argument that the anti-abortion folks are in the wrong. The anti-abortion folks are effectively holding the well-being of women (and babies) who need the other services hostage to their demand that the clinics not offer abortion services or referrals. As such, any harm done to the women (and babies) would fall upon the anti-abortion folks who insist that it is better that the women (and babies) suffer than that the clinics provide abortion services or referrals.

In sum, the anti-abortion folks would presumably say “the blame lies on the abortion defenders; if they simply stopped offering abortion services and referrals, the clinics could have the funding.” In contrast, the abortion defenders would presumably say “any blame lies on the anti-abortion folks; federal funding already cannot be used for abortion and they are just hurting women by pushing this rule.” On the face of it, the abortion defenders seem to have the better moral position on this issue: the anti-abortion folks already have a ban on federal funding for abortion, this expanded rule is morally greedy and hurts women whether the clinic choses to accept funds or elects to continue to provide abortion services and referrals. Interestingly, this could very well be a feature of the rule rather than a bug.

From the standpoint of an anti-abortion person who is a fiscal conservative, this rule creates a win-win situation. If a clinic accepts federal money, it would no longer be able to offer abortion services or referrals. If a clinic declines the money, this reduces the federal money being spent (assuming, however unlikely, that it is not simply spent elsewhere).

Anti-abortion folks who do not care about women or are hostile to them would also be quite pleased by this rule. If a clinic accepts money, then women who need or want abortions will have a harder time getting them, thus they will be harmed. If the clinic rejects the money, then it will have less funding and will be less able to provide services, thus harming women in various ways, including unwanted pregnancies that could end in abortions.

While one would like to think that harming women (and babies) would be an unintended consequence of this rule, it seems reasonable to think that this is an intended consequence. That is, the rule is not really about the ethics of abortion (since federal funding cannot go to that anyway) but about cutting ever deeper into federal support for the health of women and babies.

In a flashback to the Reagan era, the Trump administration has proposed a rule that clinics which provide or refer abortion services will be forbidden from receiving federal funding. Federal funding is, of course, not used for abortions, so it might be wondered why this proposal is being advanced.

Proponents of this rule make the not unreasonable argument that could be called the “money pool argument.” The idea is that while a clinic would certainly have distinct components to its budget and would presumably not directly allocate federal funds to abortion, the federal funding does end up in the total pool of money available to the clinic. To use an analogy to a pool of water, the budgetary divisions would be like lines painted on the bottom of the pool, dividing it into zones. While each zone is distinct, the water flows freely throughout the pool. Returning to the federal funding, the idea is that the money flows throughout the financial pool and thus ends up funding abortion services and referrals—the budgetary walls are mere “paint” and do not provide a real division of money.

Another, more direct, analogy is that of a college student receiving money from their parents. Imagine that the parents know the student is, contrary to their wishes, legally buying alcohol. While the student might argue that they only spend the money from their part-time job on beer, the parents would be right to point out that the money they provide enables their child to buy things they do not want them buying. As such, it would be quite reasonable for the parents to require the student to stop spending their money on beer with the penalty for non-compliance being no more parental money.

Alternatively, the parents could simply pay the tuition and other educational expenses directly and leave the other expenses to the student, thus leaving their money untainted with alcohol purchases. This alternative is, however, subject to the objection that the student would thus be free to still buy beer because of the parental support—despite the fact that none of their money is being spent directly on beer. Going back to the abortion clinics, the worry is that even if the clinics do not spend any federal money on abortions because it is directly spent on other services (such as ultrasounds for expectant mothers), federal funding for anything the clinic does will free up money that could be used for abortion services or referrals. As such, while not even a single penny of federal money goes to abortion, the moral worry is that the federal money used to fund non-abortions services allows abortion services to be provided.

To use another analogy, this is like the worry that federal food stamp money (now SNAP) received by people who drink alcohol allows them to drink because some of their food is paid for. Presumably the idea in both cases is to use the threat of defunding to force the drinker and the clinics to behave in accord with the moral values of those who regard such behavior as wrong, even though drinking and abortion are both legal.

Since the moral foundation of the opposition to federal funding is based on the notion that federal money should not be used to fund things people find morally wrong, this indirect argument is rather problematic. After all, it is one thing to argue that one’s money should not be used directly for something one morally opposes (like war, abortion, or corporate welfare), it is quite another to argue that one’s money should not even have an indirect association to something one regards as morally wrong. The moral challenge is sorting out the boundaries of legitimate moral concern. For example, if the principle was that not public money should be connected in any way to activities seen as immoral, then funding for public roads could be seen as morally problematic because people drive over them to reach abortion clinics. While this is absurd, that is the point: there are clear cases in which the moral objection to public funding would be absurd. The question is whether the funding of non-abortion services at clinics that also provides abortions is morally problematic enough to warrant defunding them. On my view, the role of federal money in enabling abortion services would be too distant to justify defunding the clinics on moral grounds. Of course, those that disagree would contend that even though not a single penny of their money went to abortion, they are still enabling abortion because the clinics receive funding for non-abortion services. To me, this seems like insisting that poor people who buy beer with their own money should be denied food stamps because this enables them to be able to buy beer—it is demanding too much on the basis of what seems to be more self-righteousness than moral concern. Then again, it might be something else—which is the subject of the next essay.

One point of concern is a moral justification of the law, which is similar to that put forth by Henry David Thoreau in his essay “Civil Disobedience.” The point of his argument is that the state has no moral right to compel people to pay taxes to fund things, such as a war, that they regard as morally wrong. Interestingly, Thoreau seems to propose a pay-as-you-go system in which people pay for the services they use, such as roads, and those they wish to support, such as public schools. This sort of reasoning has considerable appeal—compelling a person to fund an activity they morally oppose makes the person a party to what they regard as evil, which is at least morally problematic. There is also the obvious concern about the use of the compulsive power of the state to force the person to provide resources to the state against their will. Thoreau was, after all, an anarchist and hence this view of the state is consistent with that philosophical commitment.

One obvious problem with applying Thoreau’s argument to the anti-abortion law in question is that the law does not exempt anti-abortion people from having their funds directed towards abortions. Rather, it forbids federal money in general. As such, the principle in play would seem to be that federal money should not be used to fund activities that citizens morally oppose. While this does have some moral appeal, it seems to lead directly to absurdity: there are certainly some citizens who oppose almost anything that receives federal dollars. To use Thoreau’s example, many people morally oppose war—so this would entail that wars should not be funded. There are those who oppose social programs and public schools; so those should not be funded. There are, of course, those who oppose the police and INS. As such, they should also not receive federal funds. The end result, which would certainly please an anarchist, would be the elimination of the federal government due to its inability to spend money on activities, goods and services that some citizens oppose.

The concern could be countered by requiring a threshold for a ban on the use of federal funding on moral grounds. In the case of abortion, 57% of Americans say that abortion should be legal in all or most cases while 40% take the opposing view. As such, the threshold could be set at 40% or lower and thus the principle could be applied consistently. Naturally, the same standard would need to be applied to all federal spending otherwise the law would lose moral legitimacy on the grounds of inconsistent application. However, a problem would still remain: this approach would deny those who support the federal spending in question from having their tax dollars spent as they wish. In the case of abortion, this proposed law defers to the moral sentiments of the abortion opponents while rejecting the moral views of the pro-choice citizens. The easy and obvious counter is to argue that the pro-choice citizens could spend their own money, on top of their taxes, to make up for the loss of funding resulting from the proposal.

While this does have some appeal, it does seem somewhat unfair: the pro-choice citizens have to pay over and above their taxes to support programs they agree with simply because the state is favoring the minority who oppose such funding. The question then turns to the matter of which burden is worse: an anti-abortion person knowing that some microscopic percentage of their tax money ends up funding non-abortion services at a clinic that also offers abortion services or referrals or the burden of pro-choice citizens needing to spend their money to ensure that the services they support remain funded. Naturally, the answer must be applied consistently regardless of the specific funding in question. So, for example, if enough Americans opposed federal support for corporations or the funding of the NSA, then people who supported such spending would need to provide their own money to fund them.